Games, books, movies, TV, and… crap. Loads of crap.

Killing time, Overwatch, & more bad robots.

Apparently, something has gone haywire somewhere, because I’ve had a hell of a time not getting securi-booted out of WordPress lately. Très bogus.

Knock it off!

Teaching them to open doors was only the first step. Now we’re teaching the robots to disobey and resist?! What the hell are they thinking?

On the other hand, given how crappy human beings can be, maybe they just figure that the sooner the robots take over, the better.

Are the Olympics over yet?

This mini-hiatus thing is killing me. Not only did I have to waaaait for the next episode of Gotham after our glimpse at you-know-who(?) last episode, I had to wait for Supernatural after that last-seconds OMFGYAYSQUEE!

I’ve filled a bit of that time watching Sherlock, yet another series everyone kept telling me I HAD to watch and never got around to. Once again, why haven’t I been watching this show?! Cumberbatch is amazing, and it’s funny as hell. I’ve always been skeptical about modern-Sherlock adaptations, but I have to admit, so far this one is stellar.

On the movie front, I’ve decided that hearing Loki say, “You had one job!” on Thor: Ragnarok may be my new favorite-est movie line ever.

Newsflash: The shrine has grown! That is all.

Overwatch is evil.

I had a heck of a time avoiding it. I really did not want to get sucked in — as much as I enjoy watching it, the last thing I needed was another time sink. Then Blizzard came along with one of their stupid half-price sales, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 were both playing, and… say goodbye to my free time. Le sigh.

Seriously, though, a good game of Overwatch is a hell of a lot of fun. A bad game, on the other hand, is just ugly. I’ve had both good and bad pugs, and the good ones are awesome. There’s nothing like being two feet from the goal with 16 seconds left, enemy swarming the payload, and rushing in at practically the last second, pushing them off, and scoring the win.

The bad ones can be toxic. I just logged out because some asshat was all by himself on the voice chat spamming several seriously offensive words like crazy. (I’m talking words that weren’t on Carlin’s list.) I need to work out the auxiliary controls so I can figure out what to do about those dicks quickly. Newsflash, kids — that’s not fucking cool.

Yesterday, there was one game that could have been terrible and ended up just being funny. Two guys were back-and-forthing on voice, blaming the rest of the team for everything. “Why isn’t anybody ___? Why isn’t anybody ____? Why aren’t you guys ____?” It was nonstop, and meanwhile, the rest of us played on while those two kept dying. Finally, a third person clicked on after the eight-millionth, “Why aren’t you guys ___?” and said, voice utterly flat, “Why aren’t you?”

Games like this, you’ll run into your share of a-holes, sure. You also run into some pretty cool people who cheer each other on and don’t toss blame around like confetti. Everybody sucks at some point (unless you’re some kind of crazed wunderkind prodigy genius clickmeister).

I will say that going into quickplay with even a small group of friends teamed up goes a long way toward making the game reliably enjoyable, no matter what other people are doing. This is why I had Things — to make them play games with me. And carry groceries. And pull weeds. Then they moved out, but thanks to the internet, I can still make them play games with me.

Here’s one of Thing 2’s plays of the game. I can’t help it — toss-’em-over-a-cliff kills always make me giggle.